


In Which Chemistry Interrupts Physics and History is, Well, History

by AccioInvisibilityCloak



Category: Nothing Much to Do
Genre: F/M, Originally Posted on Tumblr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-09
Updated: 2014-08-09
Packaged: 2018-02-12 09:44:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2105013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AccioInvisibilityCloak/pseuds/AccioInvisibilityCloak
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Of lockers, and history projects, and entirely too much staring across classrooms at people who really ought not to be stared at. Missing moment fic inspired by a line from "BENADDIQ&ATION".</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Which Chemistry Interrupts Physics and History is, Well, History

If he feels Beatrice’s eyes on him, staring and staring from her seat across the room, just _one_ more bloody time, Benedick Hobbes is going to go stark raving mad.

He can’t concentrate as it is, thanks to a bizarre desire to just stare right back at her. The need to glance up at Beatrice is eating him alive, right in the middle of Physics. Of course, he has to keep his eyes trained on his half-finished homework problems instead of Bea, because if he did look up, she would catch him staring, and what if she sees it on his face, that he might just maybe not hate her so much at all anymore?

What does she mean by all this staring anyway? It isn’t as if he’s Pedro or somebody, who regularly gets stared at as he goes about his days at Messina High, but never seems to notice it. What’s so interesting about me, wonders Ben, that she can’t just look at the board like a normal person?

He takes a quick mental review of his outward appearance, trying to figure out if she’s making fun of him. He actually attempted to tame his hair this morning, but he hadn’t thought she’d even notice if it was less flyaway than normal. There’s nothing wrong with his T-shirt either- another Doctor Who number, the TARDIS graffitied with “Bad Wolf” and flying through the stars. Lunch isn’t for three more class periods, so there definitely can’t be anything in his teeth. And what’s more? Beatrice -for once- does not seem to be laughing at him.

In fact, she’s trying to be inconspicuous. Every time he does dare to look up, her eyes dart down to her desk again, and her hair falls across her face, just long enough to hide her expression from this angle, damn. She has to be hiding something. The idea of an inconspicuous Beatrice is just too _weird_. Everything seems to be, these days.

Why did he have to come late to the pickup football match in the park, so that his friends were all with Leo on the sidelines, waiting to go back into the game and whispering about something? He almost wishes now that he hadn’t snuck up behind them in the bushes, thinking to jump on Claud and tease him about Hero as usual. Instead, just before he pounced, he had heard his name…

“Can you believe it?” Pedro had been saying loudly. “Beatrice, in love with Ben?”

“Yeah,” Claudio had chimed in. “I never thought Beatrice would have a crush on anyone at Messina, much less Benedick!”

And Benedick had almost toppled out of the bushes in utter shock.

He’s probably been in shock ever since, he reflects, testing his luck with a glance at Bea, who, thank Christopher Marlowe, doesn’t seem to notice. It hasn’t taken long at all, after overhearing his friends deciding not to tell him about Bea, for Ben to realize that her feelings for him are the opposite of unrequited.

And he has no clue what to do about it.

“I hope she doesn’t decide to watch my videos, oh god,” Ben thinks to himself, blushing without realizing it. She would know everything- but then, wouldn’t she have said something? If she really likes him, what’s she waiting for anyway? So maybe… she doesn’t? Or she just hasn’t seen the videos, and is staring because she actually does like him and thinks he’ll laugh her all the way over to Australia if he finds out?

He’s still staring at Beatrice and trying to figure it all out- an odd, heated, altogether foreign feeling unsettling his stomach- when the teacher asks the class to pass forward the previous night’s assignment. She collects Benedick’s unfinished homework, to his dismay, and calls, “Pop quiz!” At that moment Beatrice whips around, at Ursula’s urging, and sees him looking back at her. Caught, Ben drops his head into his arms and hopes the gods will strike him down before he can fail this quiz. If he does fail it’ll be her fault, the harpy.

***

That afternoon, the final bell rings, and Beatrice Duke heads for her locker. She plans to meet Hero on the school steps and head home to make a new video blog… and tries not to think about Benedick staring at her with those stupid huge blue eyes in Physics this morning. What a dick, she thinks as usual. Can’t even have normal _eyes_ , they have to be all _shining_ and _open_ and _looking_ at her. But even Bea can’t will away the blush across her face as she remembers it. She kept feeling his eyes on her, like he was admiring some work of art, the stupid sexist jerk. And if Ursula tries to point out how much Bea herself was staring, she’ll kill her.

Bea slams open her locker door, scaring Verges from her hiding place behind a nearby classroom door. “Damn! Another stakeout ruined!” the Year 9 grumbles, and skitters away looking for Dogberry. Chucking books into her bag, Bea rolls over some video ideas in her mind, and definitely doesn’t think about Ben-the-dick, not even when she pulls out her Physics book and the spine is blue like his stupid perfect eyes…

“Oh, hey, Beatrice. I uh, didn’t know you were so interested in physics. Nasty quiz we had today, wasn’t it?”

Dammit, she knows that cocky, self-assured voice like she knows her favorite song. (Where the hell did _that_ thought come from? She’s definitely cracking up.) And sure enough, she looks up and sees Ben standing beside her, looking curiously at the book in her hands. “Wh-what do _you_ want, dick-face?” she asks in what she hopes very much is a cold and uncaring sort of voice. This is so not happening to her, she is _not_ blushing, there’s no _way_ -

“Oh, I have no idea, Bea. I must have wanted something from you, that’s why I’m here. It couldn’t just be that this is my locker?” Ben points out sarcastically, putting a combination into the lock of the door next hers, and removing his own cerulean-spined Physics book. Bea groans. She’d completely forgotten. “Why are you everywhere I turn nowadays, Benedick?” she snaps, turning to face him and realizing just how close they’re standing, how she isn’t the only one blushing ( _damn_ it). For one long moment, she’s staring at him again, and this time, he’s gazing at her as well and then…

They hear, from somewhere in the hallway, what sounds like Hero and Claud laughing together, so they practically jump away from each other. Beatrice curses under her breath. What the hell is _wrong_ with her? Looking into his stupid eyes like some moony idiot in the middle of the hallway, _really_.

“So… about that History assignment, eh? A report on the reign of Queen Victoria?” Ben asks, still flushed but rapidly regaining his usual overly confident tone. “Good thing you have Messina’s resident Brit in your group. Wanna go to the library later and start working on-“

“Actually, Benedick,” Bea says faux-coldly, heart hammering, her breath catching in her throat, “I changed groups. Can’t stand British things, really.”

And she slams her locker door and practically sprints off to meet Hero. Benedick is left standing, confused and hurt, by their adjoining lockers, still holding his Physics textbook.

“She changed groups…” he says dazedly to no one in particular.

Ben stares down the hallway after Beatrice for the longest time, thinking of nothing but the spark in her eyes when she’d said that about hating British things. Which has to be a lie by the way, he reassures himself. The number of TARDISes in the background of her and Hero’s vlogging setup…

He gets home much later with the blue-spined textbook still in one hand. It’s only when he sits down to look over his assignments that he realizes: they don’t have any Physics homework set for tonight.

***

When Beatrice gets home, she tries and fails to do her revising, and ends up opening her Physics book to find the video planning notes she was trying to write this morning when someone kept distracting her.

She reads over the paper and almost throws it out the window when she sees what she wrote this morning: _I do not like Benedick I do not like Benedick I do not like Benedick I do… I do._

Bea forcefully scratches out the last four words. She puts the camera on and tries to come up with something coherent, but it’s like those four were the last words she had in her for the day, because they’re all she can seem to say.

Finally she gives up and falls into bed. That night, lord knows why, she dreams of flying through space in a TARDIS, with a lanky British guy and an alien. Which is which, she couldn’t say.

When she wakes up, she turns on her computer and presses Upload.

**Author's Note:**

> Aaaaand Beatrice’s new vlog is basically just “Love on, Benedick. I shall requite thee”! When I heard Ben’s line in the last Q&A about Beatrice switching project groups and running away from the lockers, I just had to take a crack at writing my version of those off-camera moments.I hope the history assignment wasn’t too unrealistic, I needed it to be something to do with Britain so that the “I don’t like British things” line would be set up. Also, just pretend Hero ended up going on a date with Claudio at the end there so Bea can vlog alone, oops! Thanks for reading!
> 
> Please do not copy/duplicate this work.


End file.
